Antonia Albani | University of St. Gallen (original) (raw)

Papers by Antonia Albani

Springer eBooks, Jun 13, 2011

IGI Global eBooks, Jan 18, 2011

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2010

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000

IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 2013

Abstract. Stable component models are an essential prerequisite for developing customer-individua... more Abstract. Stable component models are an essential prerequisite for developing customer-individual business applications. Thereby the information for the identification and specification of their components is gained from domain models. Reference models constitute a potential source for building enterprise-specific domain models. Based on the analysis of existing reference models, this article shows how information available through reference models can be used for the development of stable component models. The derivation of information required for the identification and specification of reusable business components is discussed using example reference modelling techniques. Additionally, potential extensions of existing reference modelling techniques are shown. 1.

Abstract. Companies are more than ever participating in so-called value networks while being conf... more Abstract. Companies are more than ever participating in so-called value networks while being confronted with an increasing need for collaboration with their business partners. In order to better perform in such value networks information systems supporting not only the intra- but also the inter-enterprise business processes are necessary in order to enable and ease collaboration between business partners. Therefore, they need to be interoperable. As the basis for building these information systems the concepts of enterprise ontology and business components are very promising. The notion of enterprise ontology, as presented in this paper, is a powerful revelation of the essence of an enterprise or an enterprise network. Reusable and self-contained business components with well-defined interaction points facilitate the accessing and execution of coherent packages of business functionality. The identification of business components, however, is still a crucial factor. The reported rese...

Enterp. Model. Inf. Syst. Archit. Int. J. Concept. Model., 2016

For the design and engineering of enterprises, several methodologies are available that successfu... more For the design and engineering of enterprises, several methodologies are available that successfully address certain aspects of design problems in enterprises or certain domains. In real-world design problems it is essential to choose the right means to reach the desired ends. Often it is not apparent which methodology is best chosen in order to reach desired ends. Additionally, real-world design problems often require several such methodologies to be combined because multiple aspects have to be covered and/or the problem combines characteristics of several domains. In order to allow for a systematically understanding and comparison of methodologies and for a facilitation of their composition (if necessary), we propose a general conceptual framework. The framework allows analysing the essential concepts and constituent parts of enterprise engineering methodologies. The resulting analysis supports decisions making concerning which methodology or which combinations of methodologies to...

Enterp. Model. Inf. Syst. Archit. Int. J. Concept. Model., 2015

Driven by the strong demand for reusable yet situational business solutions on the one side and t... more Driven by the strong demand for reusable yet situational business solutions on the one side and thenecessity to provide a stable, reliant foundation that allows to adapt the supporting informationsystems in a systematic way on the other side, the need for a closer link between relevant theoriesand successful practices for the design of enterprise information systems becomes evident. Theaim of the reported research is to provide such a link by means of prescriptive guidelines for theclass of problems concerning the reverse engineering of organisations. The reverse engineering oforganisations aims at deriving at the ontological models of organisations, which build the basis forthe design and engineering of information systems supporting the business needs. An ontologicalmodel as used in the presented research is defined as the highest-level constructional model of anorganisation, which is fully independent of its implementation. The prescriptive guidelines forreverse engineering prese...

The contribution of this paper is twofold. We revisit the three-cycle procedural view of Design S... more The contribution of this paper is twofold. We revisit the three-cycle procedural view of Design Science Research (DSR) as introduced by Hevner, and we propose a structuring mechanism for the DSR Knowledge Base (KB) and the problem/context specification that supports our revisited DSR procedure. Regarding the first contribution, we argue that each design cycle has rigor related as well as relevance related aspects. We therefore introduce a one-cycle view of DSR, comprised of alternating core activities design and evaluation. With every iteration, the understanding of the environment and the problem to be solved are enhanced. Additionally, every design iteration allows for revisiting the Knowledge Base in order to improve the problem solution. Concerning the second contribution, we propose to structure the DSR KB by means of two two-dimensional maps to support an efficient search for existing, reusable solution artifacts. One map concerns the application scope; the other one concerns ...

Economists and business scientists have been debating about the ‘service' notionfor more than... more Economists and business scientists have been debating about the ‘service' notionfor more than two centuries [9]. Often, the definitions in business literature limitthe service notion to the delivery of immaterial goods. The adoptation of thenotion of ‘service' by computer scientists and IT practitioners has been morerecent. In both the business science field [19, 10, 14, 12] and the computer sciencefield [16, 15, 13, 17] a service is regarded as an interaction between a requestingparty (often called consumer or customer) and an offering party (often calledprovider or supplier). The offering party is able to produce a certain value thatis requested by the other party. But even with this common notion a precisedefinition and mutual understanding of the term service is missing. Let us havea look at the definition given by the Open Group [13]. It states that a serviceis a logical representation of a repeatable business activity that has a specifiedoutcome (e.g., check customer c...

Dynamic identification and selection of strategic supply networks are complex tasks which cannot ... more Dynamic identification and selection of strategic supply networks are complex tasks which cannot be executedmanually and therefore require the support of modern inter-organizational IT infrastructures. Existing ERP (EnterpriseResource Planning) systems need to be extended by business components which provide functionality to formmulti tier value networks. This functionality is based on a demand propagation methodology allowing a focal companyto send out a demand to a potential network of partners. By splitting this demand into sub demands the networkof suppliers is identified, which is able to fulfil the original demand of the focal company.In many industries, companies are faced with enormous pressure caused externally by changing market conditionsbut also internally by finance and cost control (Burtler et al., 1997; Osterle, 1995). In order to compete companieshave to increase their organizational flexibility to manage throughput as well as to reduce cost (Malone Lautbacher,1998; ...

Statt in Zurich oder Munchen im Unterengadin arbeiten – das Projekt «mia Engiadina» hat die dafur... more Statt in Zurich oder Munchen im Unterengadin arbeiten – das Projekt «mia Engiadina» hat die dafur notigen Grundlagen geschaffen. Eine Chance fur die Randregion, die Wertschopfung zu vergrossern.

The deployment of business components in large enterprise information systems offers great potent... more The deployment of business components in large enterprise information systems offers great potential. Nonetheless the process of finding and defining the right business components is very challenging. While the definition of business components is comparatively simple for small business domains, it becomes very complex for larger domains of interest. This paper illustrates the experiences made during the modeling process of an integrated information system architecture for Customer Relation Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) with more than 500 functions and 1000 information objects under usage of the Business Component Identification (BCI)-Method. Based on this experience possible enhancements and needed extensions for the BCI-Method are proposed and explained.

Springer eBooks, Jun 13, 2011

IGI Global eBooks, Jan 18, 2011

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2010

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2000

IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, 2013

Abstract. Stable component models are an essential prerequisite for developing customer-individua... more Abstract. Stable component models are an essential prerequisite for developing customer-individual business applications. Thereby the information for the identification and specification of their components is gained from domain models. Reference models constitute a potential source for building enterprise-specific domain models. Based on the analysis of existing reference models, this article shows how information available through reference models can be used for the development of stable component models. The derivation of information required for the identification and specification of reusable business components is discussed using example reference modelling techniques. Additionally, potential extensions of existing reference modelling techniques are shown. 1.

Abstract. Companies are more than ever participating in so-called value networks while being conf... more Abstract. Companies are more than ever participating in so-called value networks while being confronted with an increasing need for collaboration with their business partners. In order to better perform in such value networks information systems supporting not only the intra- but also the inter-enterprise business processes are necessary in order to enable and ease collaboration between business partners. Therefore, they need to be interoperable. As the basis for building these information systems the concepts of enterprise ontology and business components are very promising. The notion of enterprise ontology, as presented in this paper, is a powerful revelation of the essence of an enterprise or an enterprise network. Reusable and self-contained business components with well-defined interaction points facilitate the accessing and execution of coherent packages of business functionality. The identification of business components, however, is still a crucial factor. The reported rese...

Enterp. Model. Inf. Syst. Archit. Int. J. Concept. Model., 2016

For the design and engineering of enterprises, several methodologies are available that successfu... more For the design and engineering of enterprises, several methodologies are available that successfully address certain aspects of design problems in enterprises or certain domains. In real-world design problems it is essential to choose the right means to reach the desired ends. Often it is not apparent which methodology is best chosen in order to reach desired ends. Additionally, real-world design problems often require several such methodologies to be combined because multiple aspects have to be covered and/or the problem combines characteristics of several domains. In order to allow for a systematically understanding and comparison of methodologies and for a facilitation of their composition (if necessary), we propose a general conceptual framework. The framework allows analysing the essential concepts and constituent parts of enterprise engineering methodologies. The resulting analysis supports decisions making concerning which methodology or which combinations of methodologies to...

Enterp. Model. Inf. Syst. Archit. Int. J. Concept. Model., 2015

Driven by the strong demand for reusable yet situational business solutions on the one side and t... more Driven by the strong demand for reusable yet situational business solutions on the one side and thenecessity to provide a stable, reliant foundation that allows to adapt the supporting informationsystems in a systematic way on the other side, the need for a closer link between relevant theoriesand successful practices for the design of enterprise information systems becomes evident. Theaim of the reported research is to provide such a link by means of prescriptive guidelines for theclass of problems concerning the reverse engineering of organisations. The reverse engineering oforganisations aims at deriving at the ontological models of organisations, which build the basis forthe design and engineering of information systems supporting the business needs. An ontologicalmodel as used in the presented research is defined as the highest-level constructional model of anorganisation, which is fully independent of its implementation. The prescriptive guidelines forreverse engineering prese...

The contribution of this paper is twofold. We revisit the three-cycle procedural view of Design S... more The contribution of this paper is twofold. We revisit the three-cycle procedural view of Design Science Research (DSR) as introduced by Hevner, and we propose a structuring mechanism for the DSR Knowledge Base (KB) and the problem/context specification that supports our revisited DSR procedure. Regarding the first contribution, we argue that each design cycle has rigor related as well as relevance related aspects. We therefore introduce a one-cycle view of DSR, comprised of alternating core activities design and evaluation. With every iteration, the understanding of the environment and the problem to be solved are enhanced. Additionally, every design iteration allows for revisiting the Knowledge Base in order to improve the problem solution. Concerning the second contribution, we propose to structure the DSR KB by means of two two-dimensional maps to support an efficient search for existing, reusable solution artifacts. One map concerns the application scope; the other one concerns ...

Economists and business scientists have been debating about the ‘service' notionfor more than... more Economists and business scientists have been debating about the ‘service' notionfor more than two centuries [9]. Often, the definitions in business literature limitthe service notion to the delivery of immaterial goods. The adoptation of thenotion of ‘service' by computer scientists and IT practitioners has been morerecent. In both the business science field [19, 10, 14, 12] and the computer sciencefield [16, 15, 13, 17] a service is regarded as an interaction between a requestingparty (often called consumer or customer) and an offering party (often calledprovider or supplier). The offering party is able to produce a certain value thatis requested by the other party. But even with this common notion a precisedefinition and mutual understanding of the term service is missing. Let us havea look at the definition given by the Open Group [13]. It states that a serviceis a logical representation of a repeatable business activity that has a specifiedoutcome (e.g., check customer c...

Dynamic identification and selection of strategic supply networks are complex tasks which cannot ... more Dynamic identification and selection of strategic supply networks are complex tasks which cannot be executedmanually and therefore require the support of modern inter-organizational IT infrastructures. Existing ERP (EnterpriseResource Planning) systems need to be extended by business components which provide functionality to formmulti tier value networks. This functionality is based on a demand propagation methodology allowing a focal companyto send out a demand to a potential network of partners. By splitting this demand into sub demands the networkof suppliers is identified, which is able to fulfil the original demand of the focal company.In many industries, companies are faced with enormous pressure caused externally by changing market conditionsbut also internally by finance and cost control (Burtler et al., 1997; Osterle, 1995). In order to compete companieshave to increase their organizational flexibility to manage throughput as well as to reduce cost (Malone Lautbacher,1998; ...

Statt in Zurich oder Munchen im Unterengadin arbeiten – das Projekt «mia Engiadina» hat die dafur... more Statt in Zurich oder Munchen im Unterengadin arbeiten – das Projekt «mia Engiadina» hat die dafur notigen Grundlagen geschaffen. Eine Chance fur die Randregion, die Wertschopfung zu vergrossern.

The deployment of business components in large enterprise information systems offers great potent... more The deployment of business components in large enterprise information systems offers great potential. Nonetheless the process of finding and defining the right business components is very challenging. While the definition of business components is comparatively simple for small business domains, it becomes very complex for larger domains of interest. This paper illustrates the experiences made during the modeling process of an integrated information system architecture for Customer Relation Management (CRM) and Supply Chain Management (SCM) with more than 500 functions and 1000 information objects under usage of the Business Component Identification (BCI)-Method. Based on this experience possible enhancements and needed extensions for the BCI-Method are proposed and explained.